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Dessert

Rice-and-apple Dumplings

Rice and apple dumplings are boiled dumplings made with rice, apples, butter, sugar, and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Rice-and-apple Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice

  1. Boil the rice in water for 20 minutes without stirring.

  2. Drain and cool on a coarse cloth over a sieve.

  3. Prepare dumpling cloths by wringing them out, buttering, and flouring them.

Assemble and cook

  1. Place a large spoonful of cold rice on each cloth and flatten it into a round cake.

  2. Lay a cored apple on top of the rice.

  3. Fill the hole with butter and sugar, and insert a whole raisin in the center.

  4. Gather the corners of the cloth to enclose the apple in the rice. Tie securely.

  5. Boil for 1 hour.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Rice + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together565 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Apple + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Rice
Forms a cool, firm starchy wrapper that holds the apple together during boiling.
Apples
Provide the fruit filling that softens and sweetens as it cooks inside the rice.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the filling and keeps the cloth from sticking.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and dissolves into the butter to make a syrupy center.

The step that matters

Tie the cloth securely. If the cloth is loose or the rice wrapper is thin or uneven, water can seep in during the long boil and the dumpling can break apart or turn soggy. Enclosing the apple fully in an even layer of rice keeps it intact.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, butter, sugar, raisin, flour):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, butter, sugar, raisin, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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